EchoStar
Communications announced that its DISH Network satellite TV service is
teaming with six networks to create unique coverage of the U.S.
elections. Viewers will be able to watch national and state election
coverage simultaneously from the six networks on a single TV screen.
They also can select an individual network and view its coverage in
full-screen format.

Dawn
Ostroff, President of Entertainment at UPN, accounced that UPN will
present its largest slate of HDTV programming to date during the
2004-2005 season. Half of the network’s primetime line-up – seven
series – will be broadcast in high definition television, beginning
with the premieres of all three of UPN’s drama series “Veronica Mars,”
“Kevin Hill” and “Star Trek: Enterprise.” The HD programming will
extend to UPN’s Monday night comedies “One on One,” “Half & Half,”
“Girlfriends” and “Second Time Around” by November. This totals the
Network’s weekly HDTV offerings to five hours. Last season, UPN
presented two hours of series programming in HDTV, including “Star Trek
Enterprise,” as well as select Friday night movies.

Top
satellite TV provider DirecTV announced on Sept. 9 that they will
launch four new satellites - two in 2005 and two more in 2007 - to
provide more HDTV channels for their subscribers. This comes as sales
of DTV sets (capable of HD but not necessarily hooked up to HDTV) have
boomed to 850,000 per month, according to the Consumer Electronics
Association.

Now
that the cast of Friends is no longer around to hold out for higher
salaries, one of America’s favorite cartoon families is holding out –
The Simpsons. According to USA Today, the six lead voice actors for The
Simpsons, who have been working on the show’s 16th season, have stopped
production by refusing to record the dialog for upcoming episodes. Six
episodes have been completed thus far, but the voice actors have not
shown up for the past month to complete work on the rest of the season.
Normally when dialog tracks are completed, they are sent overseas, and
scenes are animated to the tracks. This process takes over nine months,
so the repercussions of what is happening now won’t be seen (or not
seen) until January 2005.

Some people just have too much time on their hands.
HBO’s The Sopranos has become a cultural phenomenon that has captured
the attention of an impressive percentage of Americans with a satellite
or cable receiver. But it’s the people like “Raider Dave” from news
groups like Alt.TV.Sopranos who have taken things to an entirely new
level.